Shards (Dragon Reign Book 2)

by Kit Bladegrave

  “What? No, not Craig or Kate. The plague, father, the plague that is real and it’s coming to destroy all of us.” I let my shirt drop as I turned to face him. There was no more time to be subtle. “I saw the moment the Darrahs were betrayed. Saw the plague come and saw the Vindicar sacrifice herself to save everyone… I saw it because I was there… in a past life.”

  His brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed as he backed away from me. “No, that is not possible.”

  “Again, yes, it is. I never believed in past lives either, but I have one and he… he was the Darrah clan leader, Malcolm. Kate and Craig are connected to it as well, because of Kate, she’s the Vindicar.”

  He scoffed and backed away, shaking his head as if this was the most maddening thing he ever heard.

  I would not be deterred. “She’s the only one who can stop it! We have to find the pieces to the shield, so she can use it and defeat what’s coming! You have to believe me!”

  He slashed his hand through the air, furiously growling as he stalked away from me and to the doors of his chambers. He opened one, and whispered something I couldn’t hear to the guard, before closing it again.

  “You are not well,” he insisted, and I threw my hands up in the air. “You need rest, medicine—”

  “I need my father to stop being a blind fool and listen to his son!”

  “How dare you raise your voice to me?”

  “How dare I?” I couldn’t take it anymore, and at that moment, I understood how frustrated Craig must have been all these years trying to tell people the truth that would save them. and have no one believe him. “This plague is coming, and it won’t care about our armies. It will kill us all. It will turn our people into mindless killers! Our entire realm will be destroyed, is that what you want?”

  He stared at me blankly, and I lost him.

  “Father, for the love of our people, will you just listen to me? Send men back to the Darrah lands, you’ll see the proof! It’s there, buried all these centuries beneath the ground!”

  The doors to his rooms opened again and Magnus, our head healer, marched in with six guards behind him. “You sent for me, my lord?” he inquired, bowing his head.

  “What is this?” I demanded, but my father ignored me.

  “The prince is ill. Take him to the infirmary. I believe a witch has clouded his mind, planted fantasies,” Kadin informed him. “He has been deluded into seeing visions of the past, and I fear he will harm himself and possibly others.”

  “Nothing is wrong with me!” I backed away as Magnus motioned the guards forward. “No! Get your damned hands off me! I am your prince!”

  “Don’t fight, my son,” Father said loudly. “You’ll only make it worse.”

  “Make what worse? Why won’t you just believe me?”

  “Nothing you say makes sense! My Forrest, my only son, would not run off with a half-demon and a Darrah! You spout lies! I will not have you around the people, and you will never see these villains again! Take him and keep him there until he is himself again!”

  I kicked and punched, but there were too many. I hadn’t wanted it to go this way, and I felt my dragon rising up, ready to fight our way out to get to Craig and Kate, to save them before they were harmed, but then Magnus stood before me and pressed his palm to my forehead. I saw the rune on it the second before it hit my skin, and I cursed.

  “Sleep, my prince, sleep.”

  My limbs felt too heavy to hold myself up, but I snarled, trying to bite Magnus’ hand off at the wrist. He didn’t relent, and instead pressed his palmer harder into my skin.

  Warmth spread from his palm and the rune, rushing over my body like water. My knees gave out, and I would’ve fallen to the floor if not for the guards holding me up.

  “No,” I muttered as sleep fought to take hold in my mind. “Have… have to stop them… stop them all…” I scrunched my eyes shut ,then opened them wide.

  “All will be well, my prince,” Magnus said firmly. “Once you wake again.”

  “No.” I shook my head even as they carried me away from my father. My mind was a mess of memories that weren’t just mine. “Malcolm… he loved her,” I whispered, unsure of what I was saying or seeing anymore. “Celandine…”

  I saw her face before me and reached out as if to hold her cheek. But then it was Kate again, and I frowned.

  She was in trouble; I had to save them.

  New strength flooded me, and I roared, my dragon right at the surface, ready to take an army so I could get to her.

  I flipped out of the guards’ arms and sprinted for the corridor. They called me, but I was no longer myself. As if a feral beast had taken hold of me, I sniffed the air and whipped my head to the left toward the hall. She was there.

  “Kate.”

  I took off, readying to shift, but then guards tackled me from behind and we slid across the marble floor before crashing into another wall.

  They pinned me down as I snarled and snapped my jaws, a horrible growl escaping my mouth as my dragon pushed closer to the surface.

  But then Magnus was there again, and with both hands, he held my head. Words flowed out of his mouth and struck me like blows to the chest. With each one, I grunted in pain, but then my body went completely limp. I spied my father standing over me, but all I could do was stare. Whatever Magnus did to me, froze me completely.

  The guards hefted me into their arms, and I kept my gaze focused on Kadin as long as I could, pleading with him through my frozen gaze not to harm Kate.

  I would never forgive him for it. Not ever.

  “We will get your son back, sire,” Magnus told Kadin, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It may take time, but whatever spell he is under, we will break it. You have my word as a healer.” He left my father in the corridor and followed after the guards carrying me.

  We went up three flights of stairs, and they moved toward the infirmary in the west tower of the palace. I was laid out on a bed, and a curtain was drawn around me while Magnus lit two lamps at the bedside.

  “Now, I want you to sleep, Forrest. Sleep and try to remember who you truly are.”

  I wanted to throttle the healer, but my body refused to respond to any commands.

  All I could do was lay there and watch as his hand touched my forehead again and I was lost in the swirling darkness.

  Chapter 2

  Kate

  Voices surrounded me, but I didn’t understand what they were saying. My body ached worse than it had the first time I changed. My ears were ringing, and as I tried to open my mouth to speak, my throat was raw and mouth dry. My voice came out in a croak, and I coughed violently, sitting up to try and get more air.

  Chains rattling caught my attention, and I managed to pry open my eyes.

  I wanted to scream and demand to know what was happening, but I still couldn’t get any words out.

  Panic rising, I watched as the people I now realized were dragons moved in closer. I was sitting on the floor in the middle of a room, chained to three metal loops embedded in the cold, marble slab. There were no familiar faces, and as they got closer, I instinctively pulled back, snarling at their approach.

  They kept getting closer and closer.

  I didn’t see Forrest or Craig. Were they dead?

  All I remembered was fighting off Allis, terrified and furious at the same time that he dared to appear before us, us! The original three who put him in the Burnt World.

  He’d come back to taunt us, as a warning that the end was near, that he… whoever he was… was coming back. And then… then there were dragons. These dragons.

  Smoke billowed out of my nose, and the dragons called out orders, but not in words my rattled mind could make sense of.

  They’d attacked us, gone after Craig.

  My dragon reared her head, furious as I recalled what finally brought me down. A net. The bastards had shot a net at me!

  Fury fueled me, and I strained against the chains, lunging at the closest guard. I didn�
�t care if he was armed to the teeth or not.

  I was going to rip his throat out. I was going to kill them all!

  The chains chaffed my wrists, cutting through skin, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop myself, and I couldn’t control the dragon. She wanted blood, and I was too weak to try and reign her back in.

  My friends, they had my friends. They tried to kill us.

  That was all I needed to know.

  The guards yelled, and I didn’t need to understand the words to know they were panicking.

  The chains might be holding me, but the metal loops in the floor were starting to give. They bent and twisted as I lashed out, swiping out with my hands—which were sprouting dragon claws as I started to shift—at any who came close enough for me to almost reach.

  The runes on my body glowed, filling the room with an eerie blue-green hue. I was going to get free… I was going to kill them all—

  A hand suddenly pressed against the back of my neck and my body went limp, but my eyes were wide open.

  Everything felt heavy, too heavy to move, and my dragon tried to fight, but the sensation of warm water rushed over me in waves, and as a man stared down at me with kind eyes I did not expect to see amongst my captors, I let myself slip away into that darkness… until there was pain. So much pain!

  I screamed soundlessly as I felt my dragon being chained in my mind, bound and unable to move. She roared mournfully at being trapped, and there was nothing I could do… nothing, but watch…

  “Kate!”

  I shot up confused and stared around for the old man, but it hadn’t been his voice I heard.

  “Craig?”

  The floor beneath me was hard and cold… and filthy. I grimaced as I held up my hand trying to see in the little light I had. Torches flickered close by, right beyond a set of bars.

  “Craig?”

  For a horrible second, I thought I was alone and only imagined his voice, but then I heard a scuffling, and saw his figure emerge from the shadows of a cell across from mine.

  He gripped the bars harder when he saw me awake, cursing in relief.

  “Are you alright?” he asked quickly. “They brought you down, and you were unconscious and bloody. Did they hurt you?” He snarled, snapping his jaws at the air as he rattled the bars. “I’ll kill them if they harmed you.”

  I frowned. “Bloody?” I glanced down as the pain from my wrists and ankles bloomed. “Oh, right. No, I uh, I did that, trying to escape.”

  Craig’s eyes narrowed, and I expected another lecture, but he hung his head. His shoulders shook, and I worried he’d lost it.

  When he lifted his head, he was laughing quietly. “Leave it to you to try and escape when you’re surrounded by a palace full of dragon guards. How bad are your wounds?”

  “Just scrapes,” I replied without looking, smiling with him. But the smile didn’t last long. “What happened back at the ruins? I don’t remember too much except a net. A very large net, and you and Forrest yelling.”

  He slipped back from the bars. “That bastard, he betrayed us.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, no he wouldn’t. Not after everything he saw.”

  “He did, Kate. The second his guards showed up, he let them drag us off, brought us here, and when I came to he was standing beside his daddy… with Raghnall.”

  His face paled, and I heard him swallow loudly.

  Raghnall.

  If Craig’s father was here, I wasn’t sure what would happen. He’d put a bounty on his own son’s head. Whatever happened next, I couldn’t let Craig leave my sight, not for a second. But Forrest, he wouldn’t betray us. We had a connection, the three of us, and he knew that now. He sensed it. I saw the truth in his eyes right before Allis appeared and attacked us. I understood Craig’s anger, but I wasn’t ready to believe the worst of Forrest, not yet.

  “We can’t trust him,” Craig growled, and I glanced up to catch him studying me.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes, we do!”

  “He might not have been able to get them to listen to him. He said it himself, Kadin would not believe him so easily,” I argued. “Just give him time, alright?”

  “Time? You want to give him time to what? Convince Raghnall not to kill me?”

  I flinched at the harshness of his words, and the truth he seemed to believe. “I don’t think he’s come here to kill his only son.”

  “Bastard son.”

  “Doesn’t matter!” I grunted, annoyed. “If Forrest doesn’t get us out of here then we’ll find our own way out. I won’t let him hurt you,” I promised, thinking back on the past lives, and the connection the three of us had. “I won’t watch you die.”

  “As we watched you die all those years ago?” he whispered, so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept my mouth shut and walked around my cell. It wasn’t large by any means, but at least I could move inside of it. There was a pathetic excuse for a cot and a bucket in the corner. I was not looking forward to having to use it. I rubbed my wrist, wondering if I could find a way to contact Forrest with the magic Mama Lucy gave us in those bracelets, but it was gone.

  “Shit,” I whispered, frantically searching the floor.

  “They took them,” Craig informed me, leaning against the bars still. “They took everything from us when we arrived.”

  “Course they did,” I muttered, kicking the bars in annoyance, then cursing when my toes throbbed. “How many guards do you think there are?”

  “You’re kidding, right, love? You know where we are?”

  I stared blankly at him, arching one eyebrow, and waited.

  “This is the palace of the clan leader. It’s a damned fortress. We’re not getting out easily, and not without help. Majority of the dragon army is here. If they’re not roaming the halls on patrol, they’re encamped right out front.” He glanced around and from the look of it, was already defeated. “It’d be impossible to sneak by that many dragons, especially when they’re all on high alert for sensing a Darrah.”

  “Are you saying I stink?”

  He smirked, and sniffed the air. “No, far from it. But they can sense other dragons. They’ll know you’re out before you even reach the stairs.”

  I didn’t want to just stand there and do nothing, but after pacing every inch of my cell at least twenty times, I realized there was no way out of there.

  As a last resort, I closed my eyes and focused on my dragon. She lifted her head and snorted in reply, shaking out her massive body, ready to get to work and bust our way out with brute force, when she roared in pain, and I fell to my knees with a cry, holding my arms to my head as it throbbed.

  “Kate!”

  My mouth opened, but no words came out. The cell spun violently around me and then I was on the floor.

  I heard Craig yelling for help, screaming for anyone as I writhed in agony.

  What happened to me?

  The dragon thrashed inside me, but I felt her restrained, as if someone had gone inside my mind and chained her up, so she couldn’t be free. I thought that had all been some horrible nightmare, but now I realized what they’d done to her was real.

  My fury grew, and I roared, struggling to get her unbound, but the pain in my head increased, and something warm dripped down my face.

  “If you do not stop, you will kill yourself,” a man’s voice said calmly. “Is that what you want?”

  “What did you do to her?” Craig yelled. “Stop it, or I swear to the gods I’ll tear out your heart!”

  “I am not the one hurting her,” the man replied, still calm. “Kate, you must calm yourself, do you understand? Take a deep breath and relax.”

  “Relax?” I seethed. “How can I relax?”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “No.” Who the hell was this man? I squinted open an eye and blinked rapidly.

  The man from the hall where I’d been chained up stood at the bars peering down at me. He stil
l had a kind face, but in his eyes, in those damned blue eyes, I knew exactly what was happening.

  “You did this to me!” I lunged for the bars, but the pain in my head exploded, and I collapsed again, curling into a ball of pure misery.

  Craig was spitting curses, shaking the bars on his cell as hard as he could to get out, but I knew he wouldn’t.

  Blood dripped out my nose, and my ears felt warm, too. I took a deep breath, in and out again, waiting for the pain to subside. The last thing I wanted was to do what this man was telling me to, but I wasn’t going to die in this cell.

  It felt like it took forever, but eventually, the pain subsided, and my rage abated, or at least enough for me to sit up and stare at the man now crouched outside my cell, studying me closely.

  “Fascinating,” he mused quietly, stroking the white beard on his face.

  “Care to share? Or do you just like gawking at your torture victims?”

  His grin widened, and his eyes glimmered. “You are certainly a Darrah with that mouth of yours, I’ll give you that.”

  “Who are you?” I snapped, not in the mood to play games while I had blood running down my face. I wiped it off with my sleeve then tended to my ears, waiting for an answer.

  “Magnus. I’m the healer for Kadin.”

  “Healer? Ha! Funny since whatever you did to me almost killed me.”

  “I merely am keeping your dragon from showing herself. You wouldn’t want to kill everyone in this palace, would you? Innocents do live here.”

  I ground my teeth, part of me ready to say I didn’t care, but I did. Hadn’t Celandine died so all the races could live? I hung my head, and was suddenly overcome with images of her final moments again. Watching Allis charge toward her, me, watching him kill me.

  I gasped as I felt that death again, sucking air in as I fought to remain firmly planted in the present.

  But something was wrong.

  I coul see Magnus, and Craig in his cell, heard their frantic voices, but I couldn’t hold onto them.

  My mind dragged me back again, and I was no longer in a cell…

  There was a fierce battle raging, and I was on the front lines, sword in hand as well as the shield, whole and beautiful in my hand. Above me, dragons flew, magnificent in the fiery sunrise breaching the horizon. The battle had waged on well into the night, and now that dawn approached, I longed to find a bed, but the enemy was on the run. We couldn’t stop now.